Gardeners always have a wish list. Novice gardeners may need basic kit, like decent strong gloves, the single most useful accessory. Old hands will appreciate more sophisticated tools – a grow-house for protecting tender seedings, or a really good loppers if they’ve got shrubs to deal with.
Quality secateurs make great presents – I find one isn’t enough – and the Niwake range from Japanese steel, is among the best. For tools like these, it’s really worth investing in the best manufacturers, and taking the trouble to maintain the tools; cheap tools are a false economy if you have to replace them repeatedly. But if you are on a budget, there are lots of useful gadgets that don’t cost the earth: a Ph monitor, for instance, to establish whether soil is acid or alkaline is an obvious tool when it comes to choosing plants, but most people don’t possess one.
Young gardeners will take even more pleasure in digging their patch if they’ve got their own scaled down kit in fun colours: Burgon and Ball does a lovely robust range for the National Trust. Everyone is up for some seeds, perhaps a heritage variety or a pretty variety for pollinators, and if they come in really lovely packets, so much the better. The Kew Garden range, with packets taken from botanical illustrations, is affordable, but very classy.
If you’re buying for someone who doesn’t have a garden – and many Londoners don’t - think what space they do have: a couple of standard hollies to go outside a front door would be a cheerful, seasonal option for the gardenless. And for the really space-challenged, how about that Seventies staple, a terrarium, A.K.A a garden in a bottle? They’re practically maintenance-free. Or maybe a little glasshouse, with its own micro-climate? A budget option is a gorgeous amaryllis bulb, which is striking, produces flowers about six weeks after planting and is way more fun than poinsettas.
And for those times when the weather is just too bad for gardening, consider a gardening book that you can curl up with for inspiration. A useful guide to medicinal plants would suit an amateur herbalist – and it’s amazing how many common plants do have health giving properties. Or a guide, not just to gardening but to styling the flowers you grow, is really useful, and that includes dried flowers – an increasingly fashionable, eco-friendly option - as well as fresh ones.
2023 could be the year to give up buying bunches of flowers and growing them instead.
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Crocus Victorian grow house
My goodness, how I covet this. Fully assembled, it’s the perfect environment for protecting tender plants from frost and bringing on seedlings. The parts are detachable, so you can swivel the roof to allow for ventilation, use just the base for pots or the top as a cloche. The base is a removable metal tray. It comes in square or rectangular form, in cream or khaki powder coated steel and glass. Useful and decorative.
Measurements (excluding 16.5cm legs): L70cm x W41cm x H33cm (without lid) / H51cm (with lid). Base tray L63cm x W33cm.
Buy now £214.99, Crocus
Festive Holly Trees covered in Berries
This pair of standard holly trees is the most Christmassy of presents. The leaves are dark green and glossy with softish prickles; the holly berries are plentiful. It comes in a jolly lollypop shape – not quite how it grows in the wild - which can be maintained fairly easily. These are about 70-90 cm tall but obviously, it’ll get bigger over time.
In spring you get the small white flowers that promise berries for winter. Growing holly can be a bit of a faff, if you have to try to match male and female bushes; this is an easy shortcut.
Delivered from November.
Buy now £39.99, Gardening Express
Urban Botanist Secret Garden amethyst ecosystem with lights
So you don’t have the time to garden or the space? Meet the ready-made terrarium – or, as it was once known, the bottle garden - which requires no maintenance whatever, on account of the water-retaining grains which release moisture for the three little tropical plants and moss inside. This is a handy sized version which measures 31 x 31 x 32cm, comes with fairy lights and three little amethysts by way of decoration. Made from recycled glass spherical bottle.
Buy now £129.00, Selfridges
The Gardener’s Companion to Medicinal Plants
This is a finely illustrated guide to wild and cultivated medicinal plants, some of them weeds and many of them common. There’s explanation of the traditional uses, followed by a summary of modern scientific research.
Did you know that ordinary hawthorn improves the circulation to the tissues of the heart? Here you get a recipe for hawthorn spiced wine too. Once gardens were household pharmacies; this useful compendium, interspersed with recipes, growing tips and cautionary advice, gets us in touch with our inner herbalist.
Buy now £10.98, Amazon
RHS Red Lion amaryllis bulb
Amaryllis bulbs are a lovely Christmas present and this is a stunner: a whopper, torpedo bulb which produces two to three flower stems – four if you’re really lucky – with four or more flowers on each, six to eight weeks after sowing.
The blooms are striking, in a brilliant cardinal red. It doesn’t come in a box, so pack it up it nicely. If it’s bought as a Christmas present, it should flower in February. And if you follow RHS instructions, you can get it to flower again next year. 60cm tall.
Buy now £11.99, RHS
Fiskars Quantum steel lopper bypass
This is one for the hands-on gardener: a heavy duty lopper for cutting quite sturdy green branches of shrubs or young trees . It’s relatively light on account of the aluminium body, comfortable to handle and oddly elegant with a cork grip. The company claims that the cutting strength is three and a half times easier than standard mechanisms. It’s suitable for right and left handed users. Length 80cm.
Buy now £99.99, Selfridges
Kew gardening gloves
There is really no bit of kit so basic as gardening gloves and these are just the best. Leather, hand-made, robust and will keep your hands protected from the most tenacious briars and the sharpest rose thorns. Available in S/M and L/XL, they're fleece lined, so they’re comfortable as well as strong. And they come with the Kew Garden crest stamped on the surface – swank, swank. They come in S/M (for most women) and L/XL (for most men). Honestly, good gloves are the best investment for any gardener; I’ve seen synthetic ones actually disintegrate.
Find more gardening gloves here.
Buy now £28.00, Kew
From Seed to Bloom, by Milli Proust
Milli Proust is one of a new wave of bright gardeners and florists, who left London to set up as a flower gardener.
Her big thing is dried flower bouquets as an alternative to flowers imported from across the world. Her style is conversational and non-technical; for a novice gardener she’d be a friendly, accessible guide. Here she gives advice, season by season, not just to growing plants, but on how to style them too. Her arrangements are charming.
Buy now £15.69, Amazon
Sneeboer Heart Shaped Trowel
This looks like a merely whimsical ite: an adorably heart shaped trowel. But don’t be deceived.
This is from a fourth generation Dutch manufacturer, with a reputation for hand-made tools that last. This looks good but it’s also solid, robust, rust-proof with sharp edges and point. Good for bulb planting and precision planting. Ash wood handle and hand-forged steel. Length: 26cm.
Also available at Harrod Hoticultural.
Buy now £49.99, Sarah Raven
Kew Gardens Erysimum Seeds
Obviously Kew Botanical Garden has a fascinating range of quality seeds, but blow the contents…it’s the packets here that are so captivating, taken from lovely botanical prints.
Seriously though, this range of seeds for growing plants for pollinators serves a useful purpose: these are native plants and flowers which provide nectar and food for pollinators, and support the fragile ecosystem. But fear not: they look lovely too.
The range includes the Erysimum, a tough plant in lovely soft colours, several that would be lovely dried, like the Miss Wilmott’s ghost with its silvery grey leaves, and some with captivating names, like Queen Anne’s Lace. I’d be very happy with a few of these, nicely tied together. Or, pop one in a Christmas card.
Buy now £3.99, Kew Gardens
Crocus House Terrarium, 15 litres
This isn’t exactly a terrarium, as in a self-sustaining ecosystem, but it is a charming glass house for, say, a fern or succulent collection indoors; inside the house the climate will be nicely humid.
Measuring L43cm x W23cm x H40cm, the frame is brass-coloured steel, and it lifts off the base, a black powder covered tray, to allow for monthly, or more frequent, ventilation. Keep away from direct sunlight.
Buy now £84.99, Crocus
Niwaki Mainichi Secateurs
Niwaki does some of the very best Japanese gardening and kitchen tools, and these basic carbon steel secateurs are simple to use and very reliable. They’re bright yellow vinyl with black trim – so hard to lose, even in fading light – and have a good chunky catch at the base. Just take the trouble to read the instructions, and keep them clean and oiled. Its new Shumatsu secateurs are also very good and easy on the hand.
Buy now £46.20, Amazon
RHS Moisture and Ph Soil Meter
This is a very handy stocking filler, which doesn’t require batteries. Establishing the acidic or alkaline character of your soil is crucial when it comes to choosing plants that will thrive; some are very picky. Just flick the switch to go from Ph to moisture monitor and insert in the soil to plant root level.
Buy now £10.49, RHS
Burgon & Ball Children’s Frog Kneeler
This Get Me Gardening children’s garden kit is practical and adorable. The fun frog kneeler is made from soft EVA foam and is waterproof. It’s part of a colourful range in child sizes that includes a lovely watering can, apron and tools made from hardwood and rust-resistant steel. There are lots of rubbish children’s gardening products out there, but this range should last. Getting children interested in gardening is easier if they get to use their own fun kit.
Buy now £16.68, Amazon
Ducks Turtle mat
If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed in horticulture, it’s the mud you bring into the house from the garden. This jolly 85x60 cm washable mat with perky ducks really will diminish the dirt you trail behind you: the cotton pile is designed to trap dirt. The backing is nitrile rubber/latex and 85 per cent of the cotton is recycled. Comes with a five year guarantee, and machine-washable at 40 degrees.
Find more doormat designs here.
Buy now £51.99, Lakeland
Large Blue Spruce Christmas Tree 120-150cm
There are certainly cheaper potted Christmas trees out there, and indeed from gardening express, but this one, if you can afford it, is very classy, with silvery grey-blue foliage and a lovely light pine scent – Nature’s air freshener. This is quite a compact size, around four feet or so, but as you plant it out, year by year it’ll obviously get bigger. Just so you know, it grows to ten feet in ten years. And unlike the cut Christmas trees, this one will lose few needles. Just keep it watered.
Pre-order for delivery from the end of November.
Find more real Christmas trees to buy here.
Buy now £79.95, Gardening Express
